It was a dark and stormy night in the first days of November of the year 1599 when the Spanish sentry in Fort Liefkenhoek on the Flemish side of the Scheldt sounded the alarm, urgent drumming woke the sleeping garrison and each man there, commander-in-chief and ordinary soldier alike, took up their posts on the fortress's walls. The waves of the Scheldt were running high and often disgorging flecks of foam in the face of the shivering Southerners over the ramparts. A northeasterly wind whistled sharply down from the "Provinces", and the Spaniards had already known for a long time that it was seldom that anything good came to them from that quarter.…
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